


The American Way

by irene_addling



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Avengers 4 speculation, Character Study, Gen, Infinity War spoilers, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), This is not the fix-it you're looking for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 13:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irene_addling/pseuds/irene_addling
Summary: Tony finds him in the woods, beating his knuckles bloody.





	The American Way

Tony finds him in the woods, beating his knuckles bloody.

Steve hears him before he says anything, but he doesn’t turn around, the bark giving way under his fingers, _crack-crack-crack_. He would feel bad for the tree, if he could feel anything. 

“Jesus, Rogers.”

Tony is worse for wear. Bedraggled, limping, frail even with the crutches he’ll now need for the rest of his life. Steve had heard it all, third-hand from Nat as they huddled in the living room, numb, because Nat had heard it from Rocket, and Rocket had heard it from a transmitter in his backpack—Tony had barely made it off Titan alive. A blue-skinned woman had helped him up, taken him in her pod, threw out a random distress signal as she watched him grow weaker and weaker in the backseat, found a passing medic willing to help a stranger by sheer miracle. It took him nearly a month, to recover enough to get back to earth. 

The whole time, Nebula had said, voice scratchy through the transmitter: _he keeps asking for something. Or someone. Pepper?_

(One of the piles of ash in Stark Tower. They couldn’t be sure which one.)

Steve reaches for a towel and wipes his fingers. White, turning red—he bled too much on the red ones, until Natasha had to throw them out. “Broke all the punching bags.”

“We had fifteen spares in the gym, Rogers.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, dropping the towel, “you’ve been gone a while.”

A long silence, then. The sun is too bright today, the weather taunting the world. The light makes the A on the side of the mansion gleam brighter than it has a right to.

“No one’s come to get you yet?”

Steve shrugs. “World has bigger priorities. And Ross is gone, so.” 

(Steve was lucky: he’d been in Wakanda, which had crowned Queen Shuri without incident. But it was barely martial law in most places. Bruce had cleaned his glasses, looking at the news reports— _fear,_ he'd muttered. _Brings out the worse in some people._ )

“So that’s where you were hiding,” Tony says, running a hand through his hair. “Wakanda.”

“Why do you care?”

“I do care, Rogers. I never stopped caring.”

Tony’s voice is sharp. Hurt. Steve can’t make himself give a shit.

“What do you want, Tony?”

“We need you.”

Steve looks up, sharp. “What we?”

Tony jerks his head at the mansion. “Look behind me, Cap. Same ‘we’ it’s always been.”

Steve has to snort, at that. It’s the closest he’s come to a laugh in a month. Natasha, in the whispered conversations with Bruce he pretended not to hear, would call that progress.

(They have each other. They can laugh, sometimes. They have room for _progress._ )

“What,” Steve asks, looking at the tree, oozing like it’s bleeding from the dent he carved in its side, “we going to fly into New York? Raise the dead?”

“Yes, actually—“

“Fuck you, Stark.”

Tony recoils, like he’s been hit.

Steve studies his knuckles. The scabs are already starting to form; in the morning, the skin will be clean again. Like it never happened. Like he’ll turn over tomorrow morning, under a think blanket woven with microscopic vibranium to keep warm, and see Bucky at the door of the hut, tea in hand, watching the sunrise—

The thing running down his face, it can’t be blood. 

_Oh._

“Sorry.”

Wiping the tear away leaves a streak of blood on his cheekbone, but the towel’s in the dirt, now. At least that will stay.

“We need you, Cap. We…we should have been together, to fight him. We work better together. And when we’re together, we need you to lead.”

“No.”

It’s the easiest word Steve has ever said.

Tony lets out a huff of disbelief. “I don’t believe it. Captain America, giving up a fight.”

“You make it sound like there’s still a fight.”

“There is, there is, if you’ll let me finish, we can…”

“You can’t _fight the air,_ Tony!” And that’s it, something breaking, in his chest or his heart or somewhere that hurts, voice raising, dam shattered in a wave. “You can’t…do you realize what you sound like? What are we going to do, turn back time? Because it’s just air, where they used to be, Wanda and Vision and Sam and…do you know, what we did on the run? Even before, when you quit, did you know? I trained Wanda, I helped her, I helped her aim, I…I guarded her, her and Vision, they were happy, I saw them happy, did you know that? Sam gave up his life for me, Nat to, she could have taken a plea deal, but they dropped everything and they followed me, and for two years it was just the four of us, on the run, do you know what that feels like? Do you know what it’s like to guard people with your life, and then you turn around and it’s just…thin air?”

(Wanda, laughing in the Mansion gym, aiming her fireballs at Sam’s drones, knocking three of them out of the air, giggling through his indignation. Vision, in his human form, kissing her temple around a fire in a Hungarian safe house as they watched Sam and Nat’s target competition. Sam, breaking into his own apartment, grabbing every photo of Riley he could fit into his pockets before they crossed the border, telling Steve that night in the dark of the Quinjet, _I loved him, Cap._ Allowing Steve to trace his fingers over the the faces, patting him on the shoulder— _I loved him, Cap. And I never told him._ )

Steve only stops talking when he’s out of air to breath.

“I know, Steve.” Steve. Not Rogers, not Cap. “My wife is gone. I know—“

“So is my husband.”

So this, Steve thinks, with a faint curl of what feels like satisfaction in his gut, almost a foreign feeling, but feeling anything is foreign now—this is what it takes to make Tony Stark speechless.

“You don’t have a ring.”

…well, not for long.

“Wakandan ceremony,” Steve replies. “They don’t do rings.” 

It takes a second. Tony’s inhale is ragged with realization. “Barnes.”

Steve looks him straight in the eye. It feels like too much, to say it out loud. But Tony’s smart. He knows.

( _I loved him, Cap. And I never told him._ A pat on the shoulder. _Don’t make my mistake._ And that was it, for a while, Steve just stewing in that, in the utter certainty with which Sam had said it, like he knew something Steve didn’t. Maybe he did, Steve thought, as he watched Bucky from a distance, chasing a chicken across his yard. Maybe he did. 

He thought of another thing Sam said, from that night— _it’s the twenty-first century, Steve. We’re not perfect. But we’re finally letting ourselves just love people. And I count that as a good thing, that I know it was love. Even if I regret that he didn’t._

It was all so quick from there, like his feelings were waiting for permission to be felt, the breaking of a dam, and that night by the fire after Steve had kissed Bucky breathless and they’d laugh about it, the two of them, _why did it take us so long?_ Three, four, five more visits, never able to stay more than a night, every one a haze of emotions so powerful Steve didn’t know they were capable of being felt by a human heart. And Sam knew, Sam patted him on the back and smiled, Natasha knew, Natasha gave him her half-smirk and muttered “about time, Rogers”. Wanda knew--she asked. Vision knew--Wanda told him. Happy for him, all of them, not surprised, not really, but not exasperated either, like they'd just looked at his heart and realized he needed time to figure it out. Like family. And T’Challa knew, that morning on the landing strip, when Steve stepped off the quinjet and shook the king’s hand and asked, _is there any way to make something official around here?_ Even the king smiled, like he was proud. _For a friend of Wakanda,_ he said, words curling around his vowels, _something can be arranged._ A friend of Wakanda, Steve knew, also meant a friend of the king, and the thought made him swell with pride.) 

“Funny thing is,” Steve says, “you can’t put a marriage between two fugitives on the record books, when you’ve just opened your country to the world, and both of the witnesses are dead. So technically, I'm not even a widow.”

(T’Challa, by Steve’s side. A neighbor Bucky had befriended, on his husband’s. The officiant, from two villages over. A string tied around their wrists, some chanting in a language Steve didn’t understand, and Bucky was starting to. A kiss between them, as the most beautiful sunset in the world sank below the horizon. The happiest day of Steve’s life.

They were married on a bright, clear day in March.

Thanos attacked in April.)

Tony curses at the sky. “Jesus, Cap. You could’ve told me then.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve replies, “hadn’t figured it out myself.”

A delayed lurch in Steve’s chest. It’s because he was thinking of T’Challa, he realizes, the glow of pride when he asked. Steve gets those jolts, sometimes, when he abruptly remembers that someone else is gone.

“Here, you got…” Tony’s gesturing at Steve’s cheek. “You mind?”

Tony’s already stepped forward, licking his thumb. Charging right into personal spaces, with only a nod to propriety. Some things about some people never change.

“You know,” Tony starts, smearing the blood around with his finger, “even when I was being...a dumb straight guy, jesus, _really_ dumb, how did I not guess, I figured there was something else with you and Barnes. I really missed the subtext, cause I thought maybe he had dirt on you, intelligence, but—look, point is, I could see you would protect this guy until the end of the earth. And when I was…you know, possessed with vengeance, giving Banner a run for his money on anger issues…there was a moment.”

Tony’s ministrations feel strange, after so long without touch. 

“You were over me. You had your shield. You were about to bring it down. And for a split second, I thought you were going for my head. I thought, that thing is vibranium, and he’s got the leverage, and he’s built like a tank. I’m going to die. And I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst, and when I opened them, you had smashed the arc reactor instead.”

Tony’s done, now. He wipes his thumb on the edge of his shirt. Wavering, in the crutches. Steve wonders, then realizes, that getting in the suit again will probably kill him.

“I was shooting to kill. You could have killed me. You had the moment, you had the right. But you smashed the reactor, because you didn’t care about revenge. You just wanted Barnes.”

Steve takes a deep breath.

“What’s your point, Tony?”

“That was the moment I knew that you needed to lead the Avengers. Because, flip the positions? I know myself. I would have gone for the head. I would have hated myself afterwards, but I would have done it. So that’s why it’s gotta be you, Steve. There’s a mission, and there’s still the six of us alive, somehow, and I’ve been an atheist since I was born and I’ll be one when I die, but…I think the world is trying to tell me something, that the six of us, the old crew. That we all lived. Because I found something that the world really needs us to do.”

Steve brushes the scab on his ring finger. Already starting to form. There’d be a ring there, in a perfect world. Tony would have a ring, to. 

But Tony, Steve realizes, is acting awfully peppy for someone who’s thinking the same thing.

Hope, that terrifying thing, rising through the void in his chest filled with nothing.

“What’s the mission, Tony?”

"I'm warning you now, it's not going to be easy--"

"Just tell me."

Tony’s eyes are alight.

“We’re bringing them back, Steve. I think I found a way. We’re going to bring them all back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because my terrible brain decided "HEY BUT WHAT IF CAP AND BUCKY WERE MARRIED IN WAKANDA" and this is what came out. Written in a two-hour mad rush and unbeta'd, so forgive any typos.


End file.
